My Garage Plans

Garage Size For Pickup Trucks

Here's more information on how large you need your garage to be in order to handle your parking and storage needs. In Garage Size we discussed typical vehicle sizes and how they relate to garage planning and building.

This is a real world example of a pickup truck parked in a typically sized 2 car garage. The truck is an early 2000's Dodge Ram Pickup with a quad cab and standard size 6.25' bed (correction, this used to say 8' bed, but that just didn't look right. The bed is really just over 6 feet. The overall length of the truck did not change and is still correct.) It measures almost 19 feet (5.74m) bumper to bumper in length and is just over 6 feet (1.88m) wide. We weren't too concerned about the width in this analysis since most issues with garage size seem to relate to the length of vehicles. Want more information on the specs for your truck? We found what looks to be a pretty good site that has a whole bunch of pickup truck specifications at www.pickuptrucks.com.

The garage in this analysis is a two car plan with interior measurements of 23' (7.01m) deep and 18' 10" (5.74m) wide. In this particular garage the interior walls are finished but that had no practical bearing on the results of our test.

As the pictures show, the truck was parked so there was just enough clearance in the back to allow the overhead door to close with a few inches to spare. To the rear of the garage where the front of the truck is (go figure that one out) there is a 32" (0.81m) wide exterior entry door. There is plenty of room to open the door and manuever around the garage area by the door when it is open. With the rear exterior entry door closed there is quite a bit of room between the truck and the wall. Depending on how you configure your storage, you should have enough room for bikes, lawn mowers, garden tools, toys, etc., with a garage of about this size.

We'll try to do some additional garage size comparisons for you in future stories.

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How much room do you need for your new garage? If you are planning on building a new garage or replacing an old one that is ready to fall down, it just makes sense to sit down and take stock of your needs before starting your garage building project. It never seems to fail that we don't have as much room as we thought when it comes to storing all our valuables.

Cars

Trucks

Bicycles

Motorcycles

Lawn Mowers

Snow Blowers

Boats

Trailers

Snow Mobiles

Waverunners

What did I forget? Probably dozens of things. The point is, when picking out your garage plans don't forget to include these things plus anything else you can think of in your list of items to store in your garage. Here are a few measurements you can use as a rule of thumb to help you size your garage.

Typical vehicle sizes (approximate measurements in ft/m):

Length

Width

Compact car

14.8' / 4.5m

5.7' / 1.7m

Mid-size car

15.8' / 4.8m

5.9' / 1.8m

Full size car

17.2' / 5.2m

6.3' / 1.9m

Compact SUV

14.4' / 4.4m

5.9' / 1.8m

Mid-Size SUV

15.6' / 4.8m

6.2' / 1.9m

Full size SUV

17.3' / 5.3m

6.3' / 1.9m

Compact pickup truck

15.8' / 4.8m

5.8' / 1.8m

Compact pickup truck crew cab

17.0' / 5.2m

5.8' / 1.8m

Mid-size pickup truck

17.8' / 5.4m

6.0' / 1.8m

Mid-size pickup truck crew cab

20.3' / 6.2m

6.5' / 2.0m

Full size pickup truck

19.2' / 5.9m

6.6' / 2.0m

Full size pickup truck crew cab

20.5' / 6.2m

6.6' / 2.0m

Make sure to leave yourself about 3' of space on either side of your car to allow the doors to fully open, a little more for two door cars. Allow yourself about 2 feet on the lengthwise measurement of your car to give yourself some wiggle room when parking. An adult sized bicycle is going to take up about 5-5½ feet if you need to park it lengthwise in the garage.